This volume, a part of the “History of Imperial China” series edited by Timothy Brook, is a welcome addition to what is still a rather sparse collection of general histories of the late imperial period. Brook manages, as he always does, to write with an attention to the particular while making large general points. The reader whose eyes might glaze over with abstractions about the changing legal status of maritime trade, for example, will remember the figure of the castaway Guan Fangzhou and the way he was caught in the labyrinth of regulations about maritime trade (pp. 213–15).
One of the pleasures of this book, which makes it ideal for classroom use, is the variety of sources it uses: shipwreck records (to trace developments in porcelain), law codes, what Brook calls commonplace books (biji), and so on. The book suggests to students (and to the rest of us)...
